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- Description:
- Margaret Kaminski Bliss talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corp from August 1941 through July 1946. Bliss says she trained as a civilian at St. Lukes School of Nursing in Idaho, that her first military assignment was at Fort Lewis in Washington and that she was later sent overseas to war-time New Guinea and Manila. She talks about the insects, snakes and other poisonous creatures in New Guinea, her quarters, her uniforms, the torrential rain storms, tropical diseases, the forbidding jungle, seeing Japanese submarines, being escorted to the latrine by an armed guard, seeing USO shows, the rations and having the chocolates sent from home melt immediately in the equatorial heat. Bliss also confides that she was secretly married in 1943 but that her husband was soon killed overseas and that she was married again after the war. Bliss is interviewed by Neola Ann Spackman.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Ruth Weisberg says, in an oral history interview, that she joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, which later became the Women's Army Corps, in February 1943. Weisberg recalls receiving training at several bases in the U.S. before going back to New York to embark for Europe in late 1943 on a ship with the 101st Airborne Division. Her first assignment overseas, Weisberg says, was with the Military Attache in the American Embassy in London where she handled secret communications. The classified nature of her work prevented her from getting acquainted with many people, she says, but she did meet and marry an officer from the 101st Airborne in January 1944 and left the service in July 1945 to become a dependent army wife.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Betty Thompson talks about her service as a physical therapist in the U.S. Army during World War Two. Thompson says that her unit was originally scheduled to be sent to Belgium, but that they were kept in a Paris triage hospital because the causality load became so heavy. She says that she spent sixteen months there and describes some of the most severely injured patients which she treated. After V-E Day, Thompson says her unit was split up and she was sent to the Riviera for duty in a venereal disease hospital and then was finally ordered back to the States in October 1945. She also talks about meeting President Franklin Roosevelt when she worked at Warm Springs, Arkansas after graduating from nursing school, meeting her future husband overseas during the war and using her G.I. Bill money to earn a pilots license.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project